The computer's efficiency is still low, but will improve rapidly. It took a supercomputer to beat Kasparov, but now a smartphone could do it. This generation of AlphaGo is already running on hardware that's only 1/10th of the previous version.
Like your quoted text says: AlphaGo optimizes for the winning probability, not stone difference. A win is a win. If it wins 99% of its games with minimal differences, you could still say it leaves humans in the dust. Of course, we've only seen 2 games, so it's a bit too early to call that yet.
These are the first couple of games at long time controls with the new machine, so it's not beating people over and over. And this is a new challenge, Ke Jie is considered the best player in the world, and has been able to study AlphaGo's style, so arguably a tougher challenge than Lee Sedol.
hear that argument, but in fact, I can't ever remember anybody ever saying that computers would never be able to win at chess. To the contrary, it seems to be that people thought, back in the 60s, that sooner or later it would be a given that computers would beat humans.
Some people thought that in the 60s. Others still didn't believe it in the 80's.
Ke Jie's brain has also looked at millions of things, and large parts of its structure were influenced by genetics, because his ancestors have looked billions of other things.
Let's try your challenge with a newborn baby against AlphaGo.
And currently they use rather expensive RP-1 fuel (a highly refined form of kerosene). The new Raptor engine design will use methane, which is dirt cheap in comparison,
unless they can magic the masks and other components out of nothing, the cost of creating RISC-V stuff is going to be considerable
Not really. They are already making ASICs with their own stuff. And those ASICs already have a core of some sort. Taking out the HDL from the core, and inserting other HDL for another core, doesn't really change anything in their process. A CPU core is relatively simple piece to synthesise, all straight digital CMOS with standard library components.
If and you're starting with a new ASIC, it's even easier to pick a free core from the beginning. And when you're doing a second ASIC based on the same core, it's almost no work at all.
the Tensilica Xtensa CPU which is the bit with the ARM license
The Tensilica CPU is not an ARM. It is presumably cheaper, but not free, and which burdens them with the cost of learning a relatively unknown CPU architecture. If you're going to take that cost, you might as well drop in a RISC-V core, and pay nothing, plus you get to benefit from the growing open source infrastructure around it.
Now compare that with the cost of fabbing your own RISC-V
The company that makes the ESP8266 is already fabbing the SoC, so there is no extra cost for the RISC-V.
it's not competing with the hundredth-of-a-cent licensing costs per ARM core shipped,
ARM charges 1.2% of the chip price for a Cortex. So, for a $1 chip, that's 1.2 cents. May not seem like a huge deal to you, but apparently it mattered enough not to get an ARM.
Cost is second. If I can implement an open source RISC-V processor, don't you get that I could audit every instruction executed, as well as the means to execute those instructions?
If cost is second, you can also get an source license for an ARM core, and audit every instruction.
The point of RISC-V is not to come out with a standalone chip. The biggest market is replacement of existing cores in SoC designs. If you're already making a SoC, switching out the core is not a huge complicated ordeal.
A perfect application would be something like the ESP8266 WiFi module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... These modules sell for less than $2 a piece on AliExpress. I'm sure the manufacturer does not want to pay $1 in royalties for the CPU core. There are many more of those kinds of IoT devices that need reasonable processing power at minimal cost. The RISC-V would be a perfect application for those.
I think that the number of pieces/supertanker trips required to move an iceberg would be intractably large.
You don't need the whole iceberg at one time. A supertanker can do a round-trip in 1 month, and can carry enough water for 1 million people for one day. So you need a fleet of 30 tankers to supply 1 million people. That's hardly intractable.
How about cutting the ice in pieces and using regular supertankers for transport ? Seems like it would cut down on the drag, and also introduce more efficient engines. Tugboats are optimized for short powerful port manoeuvring, not long haul traffic.
Recycling the materials in a phone doesn't require Apple to do anything. Just turn the used phone in at the store, or a recycling station for used electronics.
If natural selection could have found a way of dramatically increasing our stamina and/or strength without reducing our lifespan or causing other issues that reduce our breeding ability
You don't even have to look for really nasty side effects. Most likely the steady state energy consumption of the body goes up when fitness is enhanced. Given a limited food supply, there's an optimum point on the fitness/energy curve. I assume the natural mice are already close to that optimum. When the environment changes, the optimum may shift, and the metabolism can quickly adapt, because the pathways are already there.
Slashdot Mirror
We all know that computers are good at running programs with strict rulesets.
Except computers were lousy at playing Go just a few years ago.
Here you go, they are working on it:
DeepMind has already begun working with the UK's national health service to develop apps and other tools for diagnosis.
The computer's efficiency is still low, but will improve rapidly. It took a supercomputer to beat Kasparov, but now a smartphone could do it. This generation of AlphaGo is already running on hardware that's only 1/10th of the previous version.
Like your quoted text says: AlphaGo optimizes for the winning probability, not stone difference. A win is a win. If it wins 99% of its games with minimal differences, you could still say it leaves humans in the dust. Of course, we've only seen 2 games, so it's a bit too early to call that yet.
These are the first couple of games at long time controls with the new machine, so it's not beating people over and over. And this is a new challenge, Ke Jie is considered the best player in the world, and has been able to study AlphaGo's style, so arguably a tougher challenge than Lee Sedol.
however only a small fraction of their holdings can actually be converted to hard currency before the entire BTC system collapses
That's true of many things.
Is it getting better at the game?
Let an older version play a newer version for thousands of games, and count the wins.
Will it learn to do other things or is it rooted with the knowledge it has?
It's not made to learn other things, so it won't. I will never learn to play an instrument well, because I wasn't made for that.
hear that argument, but in fact, I can't ever remember anybody ever saying that computers would never be able to win at chess. To the contrary, it seems to be that people thought, back in the 60s, that sooner or later it would be a given that computers would beat humans.
Some people thought that in the 60s. Others still didn't believe it in the 80's.
Ke Jie's brain has also looked at millions of things, and large parts of its structure were influenced by genetics, because his ancestors have looked billions of other things.
Let's try your challenge with a newborn baby against AlphaGo.
And currently they use rather expensive RP-1 fuel (a highly refined form of kerosene). The new Raptor engine design will use methane, which is dirt cheap in comparison,
is this going to be like the $400 bag squeezer?
That was a useless product. This is an embeddable core for SoCs, which is a multi billion dollar industry.
It's a small overhead, but given the superscaler architecture, high clock speed, it's not noticeable.
It's not actually an overhead, because the translation also does a bunch of stuff to optimize the code, such as:
the REP prefix, which would allow one instruction to be repeated up to 256 times
They don't need REP, because the instruction translator automatically unrolls loops.
unless they can magic the masks and other components out of nothing, the cost of creating RISC-V stuff is going to be considerable
Not really. They are already making ASICs with their own stuff. And those ASICs already have a core of some sort. Taking out the HDL from the core, and inserting other HDL for another core, doesn't really change anything in their process. A CPU core is relatively simple piece to synthesise, all straight digital CMOS with standard library components.
If and you're starting with a new ASIC, it's even easier to pick a free core from the beginning. And when you're doing a second ASIC based on the same core, it's almost no work at all.
That's not needed since Pentium patents expired.
Great, now where can I get the HDL sources to embed a Pentium in my own ASIC ? Or, are you suggesting that I can just clone a Pentium myself ?
the Tensilica Xtensa CPU which is the bit with the ARM license
The Tensilica CPU is not an ARM. It is presumably cheaper, but not free, and which burdens them with the cost of learning a relatively unknown CPU architecture. If you're going to take that cost, you might as well drop in a RISC-V core, and pay nothing, plus you get to benefit from the growing open source infrastructure around it.
Now compare that with the cost of fabbing your own RISC-V
The company that makes the ESP8266 is already fabbing the SoC, so there is no extra cost for the RISC-V.
it's not competing with the hundredth-of-a-cent licensing costs per ARM core shipped,
ARM charges 1.2% of the chip price for a Cortex. So, for a $1 chip, that's 1.2 cents. May not seem like a huge deal to you, but apparently it mattered enough not to get an ARM.
Cost is second. If I can implement an open source RISC-V processor, don't you get that I could audit every instruction executed, as well as the means to execute those instructions?
If cost is second, you can also get an source license for an ARM core, and audit every instruction.
The point of RISC-V is not to come out with a standalone chip. The biggest market is replacement of existing cores in SoC designs. If you're already making a SoC, switching out the core is not a huge complicated ordeal.
A perfect application would be something like the ESP8266 WiFi module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
These modules sell for less than $2 a piece on AliExpress. I'm sure the manufacturer does not want to pay $1 in royalties for the CPU core. There are many more of those kinds of IoT devices that need reasonable processing power at minimal cost. The RISC-V would be a perfect application for those.
I think that the number of pieces/supertanker trips required to move an iceberg would be intractably large.
You don't need the whole iceberg at one time. A supertanker can do a round-trip in 1 month, and can carry enough water for 1 million people for one day. So you need a fleet of 30 tankers to supply 1 million people. That's hardly intractable.
subdividing it will cause it to melt very quickly
Not a problem in a supertanker, though.
How about cutting the ice in pieces and using regular supertankers for transport ? Seems like it would cut down on the drag, and also introduce more efficient engines. Tugboats are optimized for short powerful port manoeuvring, not long haul traffic.
And why would that be better than when they spend the money in the countries where they earned it?
It would be better for the US, which would be the place were taxes were lowered. And of course, other countries don't have Silicon Valley.
So the solution to corporations hoarding cash is to give them more cash by lowering taxes?
Yes. Right now, Apple has a hoard of cash in other countries. Lower taxes, and they would move their cash back the US, and spend the money there.
Recycling the materials in a phone doesn't require Apple to do anything. Just turn the used phone in at the store, or a recycling station for used electronics.
If natural selection could have found a way of dramatically increasing our stamina and/or strength without reducing our lifespan or causing other issues that reduce our breeding ability
You don't even have to look for really nasty side effects. Most likely the steady state energy consumption of the body goes up when fitness is enhanced. Given a limited food supply, there's an optimum point on the fitness/energy curve. I assume the natural mice are already close to that optimum. When the environment changes, the optimum may shift, and the metabolism can quickly adapt, because the pathways are already there.
I'm wondering why that genetic pathway isn't active for all mice, but suspect it's because they don't live as long during a famine.
Overall, it probably uses more energy to keep that pathway active.